FOR ART'S SAKE | THEATER REVIEW | AEROS | DONNE TEMPO
The Feeling of Love -- Aeros in D.C.
by Jacquie KubinWashington, DC — Fusing choreography, physical skill, vivid colors, entrancing lights and pulsating rhythms, Aeros (www.aeros.org) featuring members of the Romanian Gymnasts Federation, delivered a unique, high-energy demonstration of athletic prowess and artistic beauty.
The Washington Performing Arts Society brought the group to the Warner Theater, Washington, DC early in February providing some welcome relief from the winter’s drearier days, as the ensemble’s body became the form for the nights entertainment.
As the gymnasts jumped, tumbled, stomped and flew through a series of themed works, the performances combined a range of human emotions and visual treats leaving the audience laughing, clapping and sometimes collectively holding their breath.
Strong, confident and seemingly always on mark, singularly or as a group, the gymnasts moved across the stage daring the audience to look at the human form in a new way.
The realization that this would be an evening filled with a unique presentation came about from the first notes of the programs original score, created by TTG Music Lab, Toronto. Opening with a staccato sense of techno hip-hop, it quickly had the audience sitting up in anticipation as the black stage quickly came alive in the performance of Iconography.
The cast, dressed in black with white stripes down their side, propelled themselves into the air, almost appearing as from nowhere, where they executed multiple twists before landing, those white stripes straight as a board, face down on the floor.
As they landed their spotlight would go dark and another light would burst from the darkness and another cast member would literally pop into the air.
Again and again, the black stage came to sudden frantic life under that one spot until, in the time it takes to blink, it would go black and yet another spot, and another performer, would take to the air.
Fun and fascinating.
One particularly amusing segment was Handstands in which the entire company took to the stage upside down. The fun came in because the artists, dressed in white with leotards hands, face and feet blacked out, where under black light, the white aglow in purple-black light hues.
The pieces movements were both impressive and very funny. I for one could not help but to think of chickens, ready for the stew pot, dancing.
Early on in the show guests were treated to the extreme creativity of the choreographers, Daniel Ezralow, David Parsons and Moses Pendleton and movement coordinator Maria Fumea as the company entered the stage, moving through the striped illumination of the directed spotlights, manipulated to shine down in a fan of pinpoint lights.
As the ensemble gracefully moved through a series of slow-front handsprings, floor movements, back summersaults and other tumbling movements, the lights changed the visual reality almost as if a strobe had been turned on.
With two cast members moving in perfect unison the effect – using the body, the lights, and music and costuming – was mesmerizing.
Costuming by Luca Missoni came into play quite beautifully in the piece Dresses with performers Ana Georgescu and Alina Vlad providing a lovely vignette of graceful movement in full, flowing dresses that played against the body form and the lighting.
The fast paced 90-minute program presented 19 different movements that melded seamlessly together. Stage production was creative throughout the show, however in Minitramps, the simple front of stage screen, projected with the images of moving water and lit from behind, created a believable pool tableau for the cast to jump and dive into.
The use of shadows, as prominent a visual tool as light, throughout the show was used to create the blank space from which the bathers catapulted into the water only to disappear beneath the waves.
While all the programs where fun, inventive and unexpected, the cast of Machine became, with the help of gymnastic pommel horses and parallel bars, a steam-driven, pulsing, driving engine as the cast moved together and then counter-intuitively to create the feeling of mechanization.
The use of gymnastics equipment, the mini-tramps, tumbling mats, mushrooms, bars and rings, reminded the viewer that this is troupe consists of athletes. The muscle mass and movement styles of these athletes are different from that of a dancer, but no less appreciable.
As ballet embraces its athleticism, these athletes are embracing the music that lives within them, giving the audience a chance to reveal in their unique performance art interpretation of light, sound, music and movement.